


Scrap Yarn

by pprfaith



Series: Naughty Hookers (Swathed in Wool) [9]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Aged-Up Characters, Alternate Universe - Human, Baking, Crack, Crochet, Curtain Fic, F/F, F/M, Family Feels, Faulty medication mentioned, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, Found Family, Friendship, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, IT GOT SERIOUS, Kid Fic, Knitting, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Mentioned violence, Multi, Past Child Abuse, Past Child Neglect, Peter is a Perfectionist, Sheriff Stilinski is not a very good father, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Stiles Stilinski Has ADHD, Stiles like to rattle his cage, Timestamp, a bit of angst, craft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-06-17 19:53:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15468810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: Where all the little scenes go when they don't fit anywhere else.First up: Getting used to living with someone takes time. Peter takes that time. He still fucking hates pineapple, though.





	1. Pineapple Blues

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this one flying around for a while, so I thought I'd post it. Today is a bis of an off-day for me, too, which is what Stiles' off-days are modelled after, just FYI.
> 
> It's too short and too vague to really fit anywhere, so it gets to start a ficlet collection, instead. If you have anything you want to see, let me know. No promises, but I might get inspired.

+

Stiles obsesses. 

But not like other people, no. Stiles obsesses _comprehensively_.

Peter learns this a few months after he moves in with them and Allison, the foremost expert on Stiles Wrangling, is halfway across the world and unavailable for duty. 

It’s pineapples. 

Peter suspects a Spongebob Squarepants marathon with Laura might be the origin, but he can’t prove it. So, pineapples. 

But Stiles doesn’t just eat them for a while, or research them. No. Stiles spends an entire night researching everything he can about pineapples, down to their chemical composition and why they itch the tongue sometimes. Then he perfects a dozen different pineapple recipes, starts adding pineapple to all kinds of recipes that should _never_ have pineapple in them, makes crochet pineapples for them all, learns to say pineapple in fifteen different languages and, before Peter manages to distract him, is planning a family trip to a pineapple farm on Hawaii. 

By the end of the second week, Derek has taken to stuffing wads of yarn into his ears (whether to avoid the singing or the constant stream of Interesting Pineapple Facts is anyone’s guess), Laura goes green at the sight of anything yellow and Cora refuses to take off the pineapple costume Stiles found online for anything except bath time. 

So Peter thinks he can be forgiven when, on Friday evening of week three, he slouches into the sofa at Scotts and Kira’s place next to Erica, offers little Alli his finger to play with and groans, “Doesn’t he have an off switch?!”

It’s a joke, mostly, because even though he’s annoying as fuck, Stiles is also horribly endearing and Peter is utterly defenseless against him. Especially while he throws around words like ‘family vacation’ and upside down pineapple cake on a random weekday with the excuse that it’s ‘I love you guys’ day.

Still. If he has to eat one more fucking dish containing fucking pineapple in the next fucking _year_ , he might try to do something drastic. Like beat himself to death with a bushel of pineapples. 

He expects Erica to do as she usually does, do things with her eyebrows, give a sardonic comment and then possibly trap him under her kid and run away. 

Erica’s weird. 

Instead her eyes narrow, her scarlet lips thin as she presses them together tightly and places her daughter on the ground, giving her a nudge to crawl toward Isaac a few feet away. Then she grabs Peter by the chin, hauls him close and hisses venomously into his ear, “Don’t you fucking dare, or I swear they will never find enough of your teeth for dental records.”

Then she smacks his cheek, hard, under the guise of a friendly pat and stalks after her daughter without a backwards glance. 

Peter has no idea what the fuck just happened. 

+

Stiles moves on from the damn fruit eventually, dispersing his energy between seventeen things at once again, instead of focusing on one. He crochets, he knits, he helps the kids with homework, he cooks, he talks with Alli in foreign languages with a horrible accent, he decorates and redecorates the store, organizes daytrips, works out three times a week, babysits little Alli and generally never stops moving. 

Without the hyper focus, it’s amazing rather than annoying. 

Peter knows Stiles has ADHD, heavy on the H, knows he grew out of the worst of it and taught himself to regulate the rest of it, by sheer force of will and a low dosage of daily meds. Knows that insane schedules and multitasking is how Stiles deals. 

Finds out, in bits and pieces, that the reason Erica flipped her lid at a joke, is that someone once did _switch Stiles off_ , for lack of a better term. 

He was in fifth grade and his teacher couldn’t deal with him, so she sent him to a shrink, who was a hack and prescribed a way too high dosage aripiprazole. 

“Abilify, it’s usually called. It’s not a bad drug, for some, you know, but it’s kind of a whammy and the guy gave me way too much and there are side effects. Nausea, headaches. High enough dosage you go kind of… away, a little.”

Stiles shrugs it off and Peter gets the rest of the tale from Scott. Stiles _went away_ almost completely, pacified half to death. His teachers didn’t mind because he was finally quiet and when Stiles tried to tell the Sheriff, the man didn’t take the time to really listen, just made sure Stiles took his meds on time because it made the complaints from school stop. 

(Nine days out of ten, Peter is glad the Stilinski men are mending fences. On the tenth day, he wants to punch the former Sheriff in the face for two decades of willful blindness concerning his brilliant, wonderful, fucking amazing son. Whatever.)

Stiles spent a year in zombie mode until a new teacher took offense. Melissa, Scott’s mother mobilized and by the end of it, Stiles had a new doctor, appropriate meds, and was back to his usual self. 

Peter never makes another off-switch joke. 

That still doesn’t prepare him for Stiles’ actual off-days. 

+

He calls them that. His off-days. Peter has no clue whether that’s because the days are off, or because Stiles himself is. 

Either way, the first time he’s around to experience Stiles during an off-day, it’s mildly terrifying. 

It’s a Saturday and Peter wakes around nine to Derek tentatively knocking on the door, asking for breakfast. After the Pancake Fiasco of 2016, he isn’t allowed to touch anything in the kitchen without explicit permission and supervision by someone over the age of sixteen. (It was twenty-five until Stiles scrounged them a babysitter from the neighborhood.)

Blinking, Peter looks over to the left side of the bed. Stiles is wrapped up like a burrito and does little more than grunt and squirm when Peter nudges him with a foot in the hip. 

Usually, at this point, Peter has been fending off his hyperactive partner for at least half an hour. Nothing. 

Okay. 

He goes to fix the kids breakfast, collecting Cora on the way and meeting Laura, already dressed, in the living room. They make breakfast. Peter puts the open coffee pot into the hallway, hoping the scent with attract a feral Stiles. 

It doesn’t. He sends the kids instead. 

They return five minutes later with strange expressions on their faces. “He’ll be down in a few,” Laura reports succinctly and is rewarded for good service with an extra slice of bacon. 

They eat. Stiles appears ten minutes later, damp from the shower, downs his meds with half a mug of scalding coffee, does the _crap hot_ dance and then proceeds to steal half of Peter’s eggs on toast and commandeer Cora’s feeding. Like nothing is wrong. 

Peter shrugs it off because everyone has false starts, sometimes, and apparently, it’s all good now. Maybe Stiles went on another Pinterest binge in the middle of the night and had to sleep it off.

Soon after that, Scott and Isaac collect Thing #1 and #2 for what Lydia has dubbed ‘puppy time’. She gave Laura and Derek leashes for Christmas and told them to be good to the puppies. Peter laughed and let them proceed because tiring the Hale brood out is not an easy thing to do and Scott and Isaac have way too much energy, anyway. 

“We’re taking Cora, too,” Scott announces as he bends down to let Laura smear sunscreen all over his face. Like he needs it. “Dropping her off at Eri and Boyd’s. And then we’ll all meet later at the park, right?”

Peter nods and pointedly ignores the wink Stiles’ best friend (“Best male friend, Peter, Alli gets jealous.”) sends his way because Scott knows that Stiles is asexual but he seems to not have thought the whole thing through to its inevitable conclusion. Ever. 

But even if they’re not going at it like rabbits, Peter can think of a few things to do on a free Saturday morning without children. So he bundles his youngest up, too, and lets two teenage boys in the bodies of twenty-eight-year-olds take all three of his brood away for the next four hours. 

Then he goes in search of the other twenty-eight-year-old in the house and finds him channel surfing with a glazed expression.

“We’re alone for the next four hours, at least,” he announces and he isn’t sure what reaction he expects, but Stiles blinking at him and then asking, “Can we nap?” isn’t it. 

They go upstairs. They snuggle up in bed. And then they actually nap because what Peter thought might be code for making out actually… isn’t. 

After an hour of dozing, he decides he’d better use the spare time _somehow_ and untangles himself to go do laundry and scrub the kitchen. He half expects Stiles to come looking for him at any second (snuggle addict that he is), but no dice. 

Nothing. 

Instead, he goes looking for his boyfriend several hours later and finds him sitting in bed, three quarters of a heavy, unseasonal scarf wrapped around his hips, needle dancing away at one end. 

He smiles at Peter’s entrance briefly, then goes back to his crochet. No music, no TV in the background, no rambling. It’s not even one of those complicated patterns where he mumbles, counts and uses a lot of little plastic things to mark arcane places in his work. He’s just doing the kind of thing Derek does, same stitch all the way. 

He should be bored out of his skull. Instead he looks utterly absorbed. 

+

It’s time to pull in the big guns. 

Usually, he’d call Allison, but she’s in Greece and also busy. Lydia is out because she a) terrifies him a little and b) he has a better idea. 

Erica, apparently, has opinions on quiet Stiles. So he calls her, hears his youngest screech in the background and is promptly informed that, “She’s fine, don’t helicopter, Peter.”

He rolls his eyes. “Not actually calling because of her. It’s Stiles.”

He can practically _hear_ the blonde woman stop. “What about Stiles?”

“He’s… acting really weird? Quiet, sleepy, not really moving, kind of spaced-out?”

There’s a pause. 

“Okay, listen. You really should talk to Stiles about it once he’s back to his usual self, but he just has days like this, sometimes. Total brain-drain days. He gets a little off. Just burrito him up and let him be. Maybe stick close. He’ll reset at midnight and be his usually annoying self tomorrow.”

Her flippant explanation does nothing to disguise the seriousness of her words. Peter nods solemnly and, remembering the joke he made and her reaction, promises, “Will do. We’ll see you later?”

“Sure. But, uhm, if he falls asleep, just let him sleep? He’ll grump over missing out tomorrow, but he needs it.”

+

Erica’s words are prophecy. By the time Peter makes it back to Stiles, the younger man is asleep, finished scarf wrapped around himself like it isn’t early May and hot as balls. 

Peter sits next to him, legs along his back, for the next hour or so, catching up on work and occasionally running a hand through Stiles’ hair. 

Then he packs up for Park Saturday and, when the banging and movement doesn’t rouse Stiles, writes him a note and leaves him to it, low-key worried and trying not to be the mother hen Allison accuses him of secretly being. 

+

The kids notice the absence of Stiles with long faces. They still have overreactions to people disappearing without a reason and it breaks Peter’s heart every time, but he manages to pacify them with a frank, “Stiles is napping. He isn’t feeling too good right now, okay?”

The (nominal) adults either understand his meaning or have been primed by Erica, because they do a fantastic job of distracting the kids for a few more hours. 

Boyd manages to ensnare him in a discussion about day cares, which keeps him occupied, too, until around five. 

+

Peter dreads coming home. He doesn’t know what to expect from Stiles and he’s afraid the kids will make it worse. 

Instead the three of them, Derek lugging Cora, Laura leading the way, sneak into the bedroom after Peter expressly told them to stay out.

When he follows them, he finds them hanging in the doorway, unsure and hesitant. They noticed Stiles’ weird mood in the morning and they’re as unsure what do with it as Peter is. 

Just as he’s about to steer them back downstairs, the lump on the bed moves and Stiles sticks his head out. “Oh, hey guys. Back already? What did you do?”

Laura takes that as an invitation and climbs onto the bed, followed by her siblings. “We went to the park,” Derek answers, instead of his sister. Unprompted, for once. “You weren’t there, so the swings weren’t fun.”

“Aw, I’m sorry, buddy.”

“It’s okay. Isaac gave me a piggy back ride. We were faster than Scott ‘n Laura.”

“Barely,” she counters with a sniff. Both of them are talking more quietly than usual. The way they spoke to Talia, the first few weeks at the hospital. 

But Stiles reacts. He hauls them in, stacks all three of them around himself, and lets them quietly chatter away while he holds them close. Peter, hanging in the doorway, has to close his eyes and breathe deeply. 

“Hey, man. You coming?”

He blinks back to reality, finds four expectant faces turned his way. What the hell. Dinner can wait. 

+

Stiles has off-days. They don’t happen a lot, but they happen. Sometimes it’s just drained batteries, sometimes it’s a bad memory, or a frustrating day. Most of the time, it’s a come-down from a recent obsession, be that pineapples, work-binges or something else. 

He used to spend them quietly bulling through, because he had to, and going home to his best friend in the evening, for warm blankets and comfort food. 

He still has to bull through on weekdays, now, but usually he manages to put them off until the weekend. When they happen, the kids will crank down the volume, find quiet occupations and pile into the master bedroom, where they’ll crochet and read and play and nap all day, while Peter joins them when he can and uses the free time to catch up on house hold duties and errands. 

Sometimes the off-days ruin plans, sometimes they don’t. 

It can’t be helped, though, and Stiles always hugs them extra hard the next morning, bright and happy and grateful.

And that’s that, really.

+

“You’re okay, Peter,” Erica tells him, one day when he turns her away at the door with an excuse about them having a ‘quiet day’. She busses his cheek, punches him in the shoulder and then turns her family around, calling back, “Tell Stilinski to feel better!”

Peter does. 

+


	2. The Baking Principle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles likes rattling Peter's cage. And cake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written in the exact amount of time it took that exact cake to bake. 45 minutes. I didn't even spell-check it afterwards. Expect nothing but silliness.

+

Peter is a good baker. 

He considers baking a natural extension to cooking because if you’re going to slave over a culinary masterpiece for three hours, getting the duck orange just right, _fucking finally_ , you’re not going to skimp on the dessert. 

His raspberry coconut tarts are, to quote a former fuck buddy, to die for. Repeatedly. He once managed to end a year-long feud with a prissy old little hag of a neighbor with nothing but the power of his rosemary lemon shortbread. 

So yeah, he’s a good baker. And he likes it too, same as he does cooking. Following along a recipe and getting exactly the result described is soothing, especially for a perfectionist like him. No margin for error, no flaws. Just a perfect goddamn cake at the end of it. 

That said, having children has given him a new and entirely unexpected appreciation for improvised cuisine. Someone always, inevitably, forgets to tell him that they’re out of milk, or the tomatoes he meant to use for the pasta spoil before he gets to it between work, school, tantrums and a few hours of sleep every night. He starts keeping fish fingers and chicken nuggets in the freezer and only hates himself a little for it because small children thrive on those things, according to the internet, and it’s not harmful to them in reasonably quantities. 

He learns to make one-pot meals out of whatever he finds in the kitchen on the fifth day without a grocery run. He learns not to flinch when the ketchup inevitably shows up _on everything_. He makes easy chocolate cakes and pies when he finds the time to bake, the easier to eat the better. 

Nothing, and he means _nothing_ , with cream is making an appearance in this house until Cora has learned to conduct herself and her utensils in a manner befitting the goddamn Queen of England. _Never again_. Those curtains were designer.

It’s fine. He adjusts and after a while, he starts whipping his fancy recipes out again for himself and then, for Stiles. Once or twice a week, he’ll shun pasta, fish fingers and burgers and cook real food for the adults in the house.

Stiles confirms that those raspberry coconut tarts are, indeed, to die for. Or murder. 

So Peter thinks he’s unbent fairly far and gotten pretty good at keeping his cool about culinary sins and various improvs that would once have made him weep into his hundred dollar steaks. 

Nothing could have possibly prepared him for Stiles baking. 

+

Laura has discovered an untested but avid fascination for baking since one of her classmates served cake she _made herself_ on her birthday. It had sprinkles and everything and for a little while there, Laura forsakes even her dream of becoming a weremaid astronaut ballerina in favor of becoming a _baker_.

She only needs to practice, like, once or so. 

Which she informs them of over breakfast on a Sunday. Peter cringes in anticipation of the resulting blood, tears and batter-on-the-ceiling, but Stiles just shrugs and says, “Sure. We have a bunch of bananas that needs gone anyway. What do you think about banana cake?”

Laura lights up like Christmas. 

Peter slumps in relief.

Looks like he's off the hook watching his niece inevitably ruin whatever recipe he tries to make with her. At least tonight. Stiles is a master at handling children and even teaching them stuff. Peter’s only tasted the other man’s baking a time or two, but it was fine. Great, even. 

He has nothing to worry about. 

+

Three hours later, Peter can feel his left eye twitch uncontrollably. 

Stiles has spread ingredients on the counter like a TV chef. Flour, sugar, baking soda. Eggs, milk, yoghurt. Chocolate, cocoa, vanilla, lemon, icing sugar, bananas, apples, and a little box of forgotten blueberries from the back of the fridge. Butter. Cream. Various extracts. 

Basically, half the kitchen is piled onto the counter. 

Laura, sitting on a barstool next to Stiles, kicks her legs and asks, “Where’s the recipe?”

She takes home-economics as an after-school elective and she knows about recipes, at least, even if they haven’t gotten past sandwiches, yet. It’s fifth grade, after all.

Stiles beams at her before angling to meet Peter’s gaze, dead on. His eyes are sparkling with something that looks a lot like the visual equivalent of an evil cackle as he says, very slowly and definitely only to fuck with Peter, “Recipes are boring. We’re freestyling it.”

Then, before Peter can react in any way, he turns back to Laura and waves an arm over the assortment of foodstuff. “You only need to follow a few, simple principles. The first of which is taste combinations. What goes together?”

He grabs the claw of browned bananas and pulls them closer. “We need to use these. What goes with bananas?”

Laura studies the spread with a little furrow of concentration between her eyes while Peter tries to catch Stiles’ eye to ascertain whether or not the other man is playing a joke or actually going to _bake a cake without a recipe_?

Stiles watches Peter’s niece with suspiciously intense concentration. Laura hums and grabs for the chocolate and also the yoghurt. Peter waits for Stiles to tell her to pick one. Instead, the madman nods and reaches for the cocoa, as well. “Chocolate cake is awesome, but a lot of the time, you’ll be better served using cocoa instead of actual chocolate because it’s lighter and you don’t need to bother with melting stuff, first.”

He starts putting away everything but the basic ingredients and what Laura chose. Laura helps. Peter feels like he’s witnessing a train wreck but can’t move to pull the break. He only wanted to read the newspaper in peace, not witness an atrocity in the making. 

Somehow, he stays glued to his seat, anyway.

“Second principle. Use flour, sugar and butter in equal amounts. Not cups, though! Because a cup of butter is way heavier than a cup of flour, right?” Laura nods. “So instead, we need to weigh the stuff. And then you need to add about 2 eggs for every hundred grams of the other ingredients, got it? And yes, it's grams. My mom was Polish, remember?”

Peter relaxes marginally. At least there seems to be some sort of basic recipe. 

Laura nods and dutifully parrots everything. 

“Right. But now we have yoghurt, bananas and cocoa and chocolate to add to that. We’ll use the chocolate for decorating, but everything else needs to substitute something. Got it? Now, yoghurt. What’s that most like?”

As he talks, he pulls out the biggest mixing bowl they have and sets it in front of his eager student. Laura squints. “Butter?”

“Right. So we’re replacing part of the butter with yoghurt. Cocoa?”

“Sugar? No, flour!”

“Right. Replacing it. Banana?”

She bounces in her seat. “Oh, I know that! Kyle’s parents are vegan and he told me that you can use bananas instead of eggs for cake!”

Stiles boops her on the nose. “Yes you can! One banana equals about two eggs in baking terms, although we’re only going to leave out one egg because more egg is always better than less. Still with me?”

Peter is an adult with a law degree under his belt and he isn’t sure he’s still following along with this madness. Laura nods. 

“Third principle,” Stiles continues. “Order of ingredients. You always start with butter and sugar, except for when you start with butter and eggs or eggs and sugar. Hey, you know what? Let’s use brown sugar instead of white. It goes better with the cocoa.”

He switches out sugars and chops a helping of butter onto a dish to microwave it. Peter cringes. His newspaper is probably beyond saving from how hard he's squeezing it.

The butter, not measured in any way, he’d like noted, goes in the mixing bowl. Laura is equipped with a whisk and gamely goes for it while Stiles starts adding sugar by the spoonful until the butter clumps. Then he adds a little more, hums and puts the sugar down before grabbing for the eggs. 

“Whisk Master, we’re going for 250 grams of each base ingredient. How many eggs?”

“Uhm… four and a half?!”

“Perfect! Now subtract the banana!”

“Three and a half?”

“And if more is better?”

“Four?”

“Yes!” Stiles adds four eggs. Then he studies the resulting goop, narrows his eyes at the broken shells and adds another. “Just in case.”

For the sake of Peter’s continued mental health, he does measure the flour with a scale. 

….Aaaaaand then adds some more just for fun, before dumping the cocoa in straight from the box. 

Peter makes a little whining sound at the back of his throat. He’s not proud of it, but he can’t help it. 

Once Laura has stirred everything into some semblance of smooth batter, Stiles passes her two bananas (wasn’t the plan only one?) and a plate and fork. She goes to town mashing the poor thing while Stiles preps the oven and a pan. Once Laura’s done with the bananas, she exchanges them for a knife and the chocolate bar with orders to chop it into tiny bits. 

The third time she narrowly misses a finger, Peter practically leaps the counter to take over. She shrugs and goes back to stirring the batter, to which Stiles is now adding yoghurt and, as an afterthought, enough baking soda for thrice as much flour as is in the batter. 

Peter can see undissolved bits of it as Stiles adds the bananas, whisks some more, sticks his finger in, deems the taste good but the consistence _meh_ and adds more cocoa and flour. No spoon. He just pours. 

Peter focuses on the chocolate until it’s almost pulverized and Stiles yanks the cutting board away from him to pour the bits into the baking pan. 

“Spread evenly,” he tells Laura and gives her a moment to do so before unceremoniously dumping the batter on top of the chocolate without pause.

He scrapes the bowl empty, passes it to Laura for licking and sticks the cake into the not-yet-fully-heated oven. 

Slowly, Peter starts breathing again. 

He hopes they’re not going to make him eat that disaster.

+

“I don’t get it,” he decides, staring at his plate with a betrayed look on his face that he just can’t help. His fork is hovering in midair. Derek is cackling in between stuffing more cake into his mouth. 

Cora is making thoughtful chew-y noises. Laura is blissed out on her very first own cake and Stiles looks way too smug. 

“This should taste like crap,” Peter adds, mournfully, before stuffing another fork of banana-chocolate-nightmare cake into his mouth. Vengefully. 

“’s’m’sn,” Derek scowls through another mouthful.

“But it shouldn’t _be_ amazing,” Peter complains. 

“Don’t question the Stiles Method, Peter,” Stiles orders. 

“You didn’t measure. You didn’t have a recipe. You didn’t even _preheat the fucking oven_!”

“Bad word,” Laura points out. He snaps his teeth at her. She sticks out her tongue. It’s smeared with cake. Gross. 

“This cake,” Peter repeats, with emphasis, prodding the offending item with his fork, “should be a disaster. It should be inedible. It should not taste like this. This is blasphemy.”

Stiles wags three fingers in the air. “Three easy principles, Peter. Tast-matching, basic ingredient measurements and order of ingredients.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

There is an order to baking. A way of doing things. A recipe to follow and a prefect, predictable outcome. This is cheating. It’s a violation. It’s ruining Peter’s goddamn worldview. 

Stiles is watching him with that glint in his eyes again and suddenly, Peter gets it. “This is payback for me calling your filing system at work an unorganized mess, isn’t it?”

Finger guns. Stiles actually makes finger guns. Peter’s taste in lovers is clearly terrible. He regrets everything. 

“So you _were _fucking with me. There was a recipe after all.”__

__“What? No! I told you, three simply principles, Peter! Taste matching-,”_ _

__Peter makes an incoherent noise of frustration and almost topples his chair in his haste to get to his feet and storm out of the room._ _

__He isn’t listening to this anymore. Clearly, Stiles’ baking skills are somehow outside the logic and order of things and thus an aberration in and of themselves. Not freaking normal._ _

__Behind him, his family cackles like the hyenas they are._ _

__Peter pauses. Backtracks a few steps. Snags the goddamn cake._ _

___Then_ he leaves. _ _

__+_ _


	3. Dear John

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allison reading John the riot act. This ties in directly with String Theory and won't make sense without it. Set after Stiles tells his father some hard truths.

+

Allison does not like John Stilinski. 

There, she said it. It’s not that he’s a bad person, or anything. He’s not even one of those people who just rub her the wrong way, no matter what they do. No instinctive dislike. It’s a very specific, well-nourished dislike. 

John is – was – good at his job, polite, helpful, calm and solid. When he broke the news about the car accident, there was honest compassion in his gaze and every single time he asked her how she was doing in the aftermath, he was sincere. Her dad likes him well enough to have dinner with him at least a few times a month. 

He loves his son. 

And there’s the problem, the reason Allison sees John and feels herself get… not exactly angry, but something very like it. Because John loves his son and he thinks that’s enough. He thinks the mere fact of love excuses the fact that he wasn’t ever there when Stiles needed him. 

Not a single lacrosse game in all of their high school career. He was home so seldom that Stiles was surprised to come home and find his father there. He didn’t help Stiles in the household, didn’t take him prom shopping, didn’t remember his parent teacher nights, didn’t ever ask where Stiles was or what he was doing. There were no report cards pinned on the fridge in the Stilinski household, no worried ‘where are you’ texts. There were no weekend excursions. There weren’t even shared meals, unless the happened to both be home at the same time by coincidence. 

And Stiles, when she met him at the tender age of fifteen was so used to it that he didn’t even seem to know there was anything wrong with that. Allison, single child of two loving, doting helicopter parents was agog at the mere idea of her parents disappearing for days on end to their jobs and not even checking in. If Allison wanted to spend the night at a friend’s at sixteen, they demanded phone number, home address, number of people present and a morning check in. _At the least_. 

When Stiles decided to sleep over at Scott’s, or Boyd’s, or anywhere else, he fired his dad a text and got back an _ok_. 

John loves Stiles, but, she knows from watching for a long time, he doesn’t care for him very much. 

It got better after Peter’s sister died and they started talking, working a little on their skewed relationship. Marginally. 

But now, two years later, here they are. John shot, Stiles off the rails and everyone hurting. 

This time, though, this time, Allison Argent will not hold her tongue. This time, Stiles spoke out and that means she can set a few things straight with the man who calls himself her best friend’s father. 

After sending Stiles and Peter off to the comfort of home and kids to snuggle, she goes for lunch with her former future-mother-in-law and it’s fun, the way it always is with Mel. The woman is smart as a whip, sarcastic, down to earth and there is something thrilling about getting together with Scott’s mother and talking about him. Someone else might find it weird that Alli stays in contact with her ex-boyfriend’s mother, but Scott isn’t just her ex. He’s also a close friend and a solid part of her life. Plus, there’s the parent pipeline. Her dad is friends with Melissa, too. 

So it’s good. Easy. Happy. 

Until they split the bill and Melissa hugs her, asking, “You’re going back to the hospital, aren’t you?”

Alli looks the older woman in the face, finds no trace of reproach, and nods. “I think I need to set a few things straight. Things… things he should have known a long time ago.”

“Like what happened when he got shot the last time?”

They never talked about it to anyone, Allison keeping Stiles’ secret, and the man he hurt, too. The Deputies handled it without getting their injured boss involved. John doesn’t know. And neither should Melissa. 

But since the woman was always more of a parental presence in Stiles’ life than his own father, Alli isn’t really surprised that Mel knows _something_ happened. 

“Maybe,” she allows. “Mostly, though, I want to tell him how things are going to be from now on. Because you know he’ll try to fix it.”

Anyone would, after what happened earlier. But pushing now is going to send Stiles running forever. No. If John ever wants to have a relationship with Stiles again, he’s going to need to back the hell off for a good, long while.

And Alli is going to have to be the one to make that clear. 

So she girds her loins, as Stiles would say, takes a deep breath, and storms John’s hospital room. 

“What did – Allison? Did you forget something?”

She shakes her head and refuses to answer, knowing she’ll only get sidetracked. She should have called Lydia and gotten backup for this, maybe. Too late now. 

“I’m here to add a few things to what Stiles said earlier.”

He deflates briefly, then narrows his eyes at her. “I don’t think-,”

“No, you usually don’t, when it comes to Stiles, and we’ve all kept our mouths shut for a very long time, but it’s over now. Stiles finally faced the music and that means I’m done biting my tongue. So shut up and listen.”

Wow. She might actually be a bit angrier than she thought she was. Huh. To stop herself from looming threateningly over a recently shot man, she sits down in a visitor’s chair. Takes another deep breath. Yogi breath. In and out. Cool it, Argent. 

“Do you know why Stiles has marble cake for his birthday every year?”

John looks taken aback. “I… no. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Because when they were thirteen, Isaac and Erica were the only ones who knew how to bake and that was the fanciest cake they could manage.”

When the old man opens his mouth to, on doubt, protest again, she goes on, “More to the point, because his friends felt so bad about the fact that you couldn’t even be bothered to pick up a store-bought cake for his birthday that they made him one and it's become a tradition.”

“Thirteen? That was the year with the poachers, there were traps all over the preserve, I was-,”

“Busy. Yes. You always were. You could have pre-ordered a cake. Had one delivered. Had a little celebration a few days later. Or, fuck me, you could have taken an hour off for lunch to run to the store, buy a cupcake and stick a freaking candle in it, so your son wouldn’t feel like he was goddamn invisible to you!”

Really very angry. Oh my. She tries to reign herself in. “You still don’t get it. Even now. It doesn’t matter that you were busy. It doesn’t matter that you never meant to hurt Stiles, or that you were out saving lives or that you love him. You weren’t there. That’s the only thing that matters. You. Were. Not. There. Isaac was being beaten bloody on the daily by his father and Erica had crippling seizures and a shitty home life and they still managed to be better family at thirteen than you were to your own son.”

John’s eyes are closed and his lips tight and god, he looks old. Her own dad is pushing sixty, now, but John has to be what, sixty-five? Years hard lived and still, always, that grief for a woman who’s been dead now almost longer than she was ever alive. Stilinski men don’t let go very well, do they?

“I don’t know how to fix it,” he whispers. Defeated. Old. 

She feels herself deflate a little. “First, you stop being defensive and accept that you fucked up. Let it sink in. Really sink in, so you stop putting your foot in your mouth all the time.”

Meekly, he nods.

“Then, you do nothing. Because, you see, Stiles got used to you not being there a long time ago. He built an entire life around it, in fact. Forcing your way in now is only going to upset the whole balance of it. So you’re going to leave Stiles to calm down and regain his balance. You’re going to Skype call the kids in a few days, like you agreed, to show them you’re fine. And you’re going to tell Peter, who will undoubtedly be the only one there with the kids, that you are going to wait for Stiles to call you. That you want him to call you. You won’t promise to do better, because Stiles doesn’t need any more broken promises in his life. And then you’re going to, very carefully, start _doing_ for Stiles instead of just _feeling_ , because whoever said love is all you need to raise a kid was obviously an idiot. It takes care and devotion and time and hugs and comfort and most of all, it takes interest. Am I making myself clear?”

She’s standing again, hands on her hips. Suddenly, a wry smile splits John’s face. “You know, I always thought you had your father’s cooler temper, but I can see your mother in you after all. You grew up terrifying, Allison. I’m glad my son has you in his corner.”

There are… about seventeen things she could say to that, chief among them, _oh so now you care_ , but all she returns is a brisk, “Always." She once helped him hide assault and what she suspects might have been attempted murder. There's really no going back from that. But John doesn't know that and, she thinks, there's no need to tell him today. 

"Now, do you understand what I just said?”

“Yes. I fucked up. And even if Stiles is too much like his mother to make me do penance, you will.”

“We all will. Don’t think Peter, or Lydia or even Scott, won’t rip into you just the same if you screw up again. You’re on your third chance now. One more strike and they’ll never find your body.”

It’ll break the kids’ hearts, but Alli thinks she can convince her father to jump in as a replacement grandpa to cushion the blow. They’ll forget John in time. God knows, he makes that very easy. 

And because she is, apparently, seriously contemplating murder now, she decides it’s time to go. She nods to herself, to John, just once. 

“Get well,” she offers as she stalks out, already digging for her keys. If she hurries, she can just make it in time for pizza and a long, hard round of hugs from her family.

+


	4. Lunchables

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isaac and Jennifer having that lunch mentioned in String Theory. Short and sweet.

+

Jennifer is exhausted. 

Her first week at her new job isn’t even half over and she is bone-tired. Her noise tolerance has apparently been misplaced during the move, her head is hurting, her predecessor turned the curriculum on its head in ways that will take her weeks to unscrew and her new heels are killing her. 

She sinks into her assigned seat in the teacher’s room and groans. Beside her, Shawna, a math teacher, laughs. “That bad?”

“I might have to find Mr… Higgins?” she waits for the other woman’s nod at her predecessor’s name, “and yell at him. He left a mess.”

“Good old Horace,” Shawna muses. “Until he had his health scare in April, we thought he’d keep working until he keeled over. He was a stubborn old coot, and he made it completely impossible to retire or fire him. Boss woman was about ready to have him assassinated.” She mimes shooting someone. 

Jennifer manages a weak chuckle. “I think I’ll just spend my lunch napping right here.”

“Negative, black eagle,” a new voice interrupts her peaceful plans. Isaac Lahey steps up to the table, knocking on it twice. He grins at them both boyishly, perfectly aware that his dimples and floppy curls make him look even younger. 

“Isaac,” Shawna greets. “It’s not your day!”

“Ah, but I’m not here for the at-risk youth today. I’m here for teach.” He beams and offers Jennifer his hand to haul her up. “Come on, loser, we’re going for lunch.”

“Did you just misquote _Mean Girls_ at me?”

“I have a twelve-year-old niece, if you’ll remember. And Alli has weird taste in movies.”

Shawna chortles. “You two know each other, I take it?”

Jennifer shrugs. “Degrees of separation. I’m that niece’s new next door neighbor.”

Dramatically, Isaac clutches at his chest. “Say it isn’t so! I showed you around! We had a barbeque together! We’re practically sand box buddies at this point!”

“You’re a dork,” she informs him, dryly. 

“That I am. So, lunch?”

“Can I take my heels off?”

“Sure. But wait until we’re seated, okay?”

Shawna waves them off and Isaac leads Jennifer out the back, opposite the parking lot. “Wait for it,” he tells her, when she asks where they’re going that includes a hike across the football field.

They end up in an alley filled with dumpsters and stupid graffiti, from where Isaac confidently strides onto a bustling street that… Jennifer has never seen before. A basic sense of orientation tells her they're on the far side of the block hte school is on, but they seem to have changed from semi-residential to fully commercial without her looking. He takes a sharp left and suddenly they’re in front of a cute little café, striped awning and all. 

“Best sandwiches in town,” he promises as he holds the door for her. 

They find a little table by the window and Jennifer’s stomach starts rumbling almost on command as soon as she really takes in the smells of the place. Spices, warm bread and something heavier and sweeter. Pastries, probably.

Isaac, sensing his victory, grins and leans back. “So, how’s tricks?”

She ticks off, “My lesson plans are screwed, my feet are killing me, my noise tolerance has dropped to zero in the few weeks I wasn’t working and, oh, yeah, I met Maggie ‘You can’t tell me what to do, bitch’ Simmons today.”

She shouldn’t talk out of school – literally – but Isaac is practically a member of staff. Since Maggie has already been pointed out as a problem student, he probably knows her professionally, too.

Immediately, he winces. “Yikes. Poor you. If she ever gets really riled, just make sure you’re not between her and the door. Also, witnesses. Lots and lots of witnesses.”

Her eyebrows hit her hairline. “She’s that bad?”

“Last year she slapped a teacher when he refused to up her grade and then tried to cry assault. The janitor cleaning one room over was the only thing that saved him. She’s a spoiled single kid with divorced parents who used her for a chess piece in their war. She correlates power with comfort and lashes out at anyone she perceives as a threat.”

“Poor kid.”

He shrugs. “To a point. She’s well over the line separating victim from aggressor. I’ve suggested therapy more than once, but she refuses and her parents indulge her.”

“She’s going to crash hard when she gets out of school.”

“Yup,” he agrees, popping his ‘p’. “On the upside, when she’s not going off on you, it’s actually kind of hilarious.”

The waitress comes then and takes their orders, delaying Jennifer’s, “How?”

“Her last boyfriend cheated on her. She painted his entire windshield with nail polish in the school parking lot. Hot pink, of course. Then she told him to ask his ho to borrow her nail polish remover.”

That’s… not actually causing property damage, probably, a pain to remove and more Machiavellian than Jennifer expected. She makes a mental note to treat the girl with caution even as a helpless giggle escapes her at the mental image. 

Isaac joins in with a shrug. “Told you. Her psycho is amusing.”

“Oh god, that’s a terrible thing to say.”

“Totally. But wait until I tell you who the bf was. Have you met Big Tyler yet?”

“The walking Quarterback stereotype?”

“Yup.”

“Doesn’t he drive a Hum-Vee?”

“Yup.”

“In yellow?”

“Oh, yeah.”

She’s still helplessly giggling by the time their food arrives and she takes her first bite. She moans. Damn, but that is good. 

Isaac beams. 

She studies him briefly, then takes a drink, finishes her giggling with one last hiccup and asks, “Are you flirting with me, Isaac?”

“It is working?” He looks adorably hopeful.

“I’m gay.”

He pouts, then shrugs. “Shame. I was hoping really hard for bi. Does Amy know, yet?”

“Why would Amy need to know?”

“Because she’s our token lesbian and has spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time waxing poetic about your legs since the barbeque.”

She hitches up an eyebrow. “So the two lesbians you know automatically must get together?”

“Hey,” he defends instantly, “I know at least three! And I’m just warning you. Amy’s a bit of a vamp. She will hit on you. Hard.”

“Well,” she counters, suddenly quiet. “I’m not really looking.”

He winces and she looks up surprised. “I have no idea what sore spot I just hit, but sorry.”

God, these people are way too nice. All of them. They don’t even know her and they treat her far too well. “It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not. But okay. Wanna hear more stories about whacky teenagers?”

He’s giving her an out. She smiles. Nods.

“Okay, then. Have you met BT Jr., yet? He’s the one with the purple Mohawk and the coke-bottle glasses. He carries a stuffed T-Rex wherever he goes. When he gets anxious, Rexy speaks for him. I’ve been trying to work out better coping mechanisms with him, but so far, Rexy tells me, I haven’t been telling them anything new.”

“Autistic?”

“Definitely on the spectrum, but the fun part is that Rexy works so well as a mechanism, that he loses all typically autistic traits when she’s the one doing the talking. And since a testing environment stresses him, she always does the tests and she shows no traits. There’s a dinosaur exhibit a few towns over and I want to take them there, build up trust, but BT is a minor and his parents are harder to catch than a wet cat, I’ve been calling for weeks and-“

Far, far too kind. To anyone and everyone, apparently. Jennifer eats her lunch, makes a friend and gets a convenient overview of all the difficult or special kids at school while she’s at it. 

And she does it all barefoot because those heels are murder. 

+  
 


End file.
